Hello Li,
I dont think you made a mistake on seeing this bird.Maybe Marv can fill you more in on this.This booby was traveld i guess from north on a boat call DISCOVERY.The couple trying to get rid of the bird,but with no success,so there left the booby on the boat at 7.30where we checked this sighting out at 11.45 am.There after, other birders arrieved.As we mention David Patrick an i went back today afternoon to check out all the possible areas in Tacoma where this bird would possible be.We comming to the conclusion that the booby flew back north where the couple what owned the discovery picked this bird up.Thanks for posting this information ,so maybe other birders can look in the area you saw this bird.
Ruth Sullivan
godwit at worldnet.att.net
Tacoma

----- Original Message -----
From: Kevin Li
To: mbreece at foxinternet.net
Cc: tweet tweet
Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 12:39 PM
Subject: re: brown booby


Hi Marv,

Funny that you should mention that brown booby; just yesterday I thought I might possibly have glimpsed one flying toward Harbor Island, from about a 1/4 mile south of the West Seattle Bridge (Terminal 105). I told Kris when I got home, but didn't feel good enough about it for a posting. It was flying about 80 feet up, looked somewhat like a funny looking male common merganser; but it flew very leisurely, seemed too big, and the bill was thick and tapering to a point, with no hook. The head and neck were uniformly dark, but not black like a merganser; the contrast of light and dark was striking, but not as in a male common merganser. I didn't get a good look at the back or the top of the wings. It was in the late morning, around 10. It was striking enough for me to run downriver for a better look; no mere merganser, I thought. I never got another look. In the afternoon I searched again, without success. I used to see nesting brown boobies close up when I worked in Honduras years ago.

Kevin Li
Ballard, USA
kdli at msn.com